| 20 nov 2001 well, i had my afara interview today. mixed news. i mean, i walked into the office, and i saw this guy working there who wore a stanford 6th man shirt! i thought, "how cool is THAT?" and there was a much better diversity there and a general sense of coolness. i'm big on the office vibe, and this place seemed really nice. i mean, one of my interviewers was a woman! that's never happened before. not that she was hot or anything, but it's nice to see a semblance of a gender balance in the workplace. but then, the first guy who interviewed me kept asking me about timing. like static timing analysis and how to improve timing and such. i realized that that's the position i was interviewing for... not a design position. i mean, i don't have a problem with doing timing, but that's supposed to only be a part of my full set of activities. so i got really alarmed, and actually kinda pissed off that the recruiting guy didn't let me know the truth about the position i was going in for. *sigh* i mean, afara looks really cool. its founders have a good reputation (one of them is a stanford professor, which just makes it even cooler), and they have good well-known brandname investors. yes, they are going up against some huge incumbent companies, but still... something about them convinces me that they'll be successful... and it's a startup! which means buku bucks! man... i dunno. on the cisco front, it turns out that they want me back for a second round, which looks good. i'm heading over there are 10am tomorrow (yes, it's early for me) and staying there for like 5 hours. so, if i get ahead of myself and find myself choosing between afara and cisco, it'll be a tough decision. i mean, in terms of financial opportunities, i'd much rather work for a startup, because at least there's a chance that it'll score big. but at afara, i'll be doing something kinda lame, at least for the time being. but it does seems like a cool company. i hate turning down companies that want me. a part of me wants to work for everyone, because each company does have its own sets of pros, and i just want it all... so i dunno. cisco always seemed like a cool "second-choice" company, because it's more stable and stuff than startups, but while i'm still young, i'm still dreaming. i dunno. part of me knows that cisco would be a good experience for me, but there's just something about big companies that seems to limit my chance at standing out and establishing myself as a really good engineer. hm. yeah. i should be happy with the fact that right now, i at least seem to have some choices in where i want to be employed. next week, i'm supposed to hear back from a data storage startup called 3pardata. i've done a little bit of research on them, and they seem strong and very hyped up, but the one glaring problem... it's in fremont. yeah. commuting across the dumbarton bridge every day... that might really make my weekdays a huge bummer. but they scored $100 million in funding, and that's a really impressive sum these days. last night, i was surprised to get a phone call from jay's friend una. i knew una back in my freshman days... she lived in a neighboring dorm, and during the alondra progressive party (or something like that...) she served up my very first (and only) upside-down margarita. and the next year, she head up the asian american freshman orientation program, and she called me personally to join the group for the year-beginning skits and stuff. but anyways, una and i watched _harry potter_. it was REALLY REALLY good! i mean, i know that they say when you read books, you imagination creates images that are far deeper and better than what they can portray in real life, but i dunno... having an image attached to what hogwarts looked like, or how the quidditch game played out... it was just really refreshing to finally have an idea of how other people envisioned it. perhaps my imagination is really lame or something. during the first part, i was just so excited for little harry, going from his sad muggle existence and finding out for the first time the grandeur of the wizarding world. i was literally grinning when he first stepped into diagon alley with hagrid... the 2nd half of the movie wasn't that exciting for me, because i read the book, so i know what happens. but still... i highly recommend the movie... it's really faithful to the book, and the visual are really cool. the quidditch match is especially cool, despite being quite obvious that all the people in the background and flying on their brooms were computer animated. funny thing... the girl who interviewed me today was also called una. although her name was pronounced "yuu-na," as opposed to _harry potter_ girl, who is pronounced "oo-na." but still a neat coincidence. so i still haven't decided what i'm doing for thanksgiving. alan just called me and said that his place is open to me for turkey day. jay's probably going to stay here and whip up some food. i think it'd be fun to cook with him, but i have a special softness in my heart for alan's house... all those years in college and post-college when i didn't go home (which was quite a few of them), i went to alan's house. it was like my home away from home. so i don't know... arrrgh. you know, if afara wanted me for a design position, i'd most likely go there. and the fact that startups usually pay more than places like cisco (who admit that they _are_ on the low end in terms of salary)... that just tips the scale even more to afara. shit. it's bugging me. the recruiting guy there said that he'd call me on monday, so i guess it's gonna be a wait. in the mean time, i hope to land an offer from cisco after tomorrow's grueling round 2 of interviews. it'd good to at least have an offer, believe me. especially after three weeks of bleakness. i got my first unemployment check today. yay. $207! (after a 10% withholding) well, the big relief of the day (after the disappointment from the pigeonholing that afara wanted from me) is that the guy from cisco yesterday (the one who gave me that STUPEFYING question) didn't hate me. or maybe he does hate me. but yeah. 2nd round, baby. we'll see how it goes. |